I am willing to pay for someone to implement 3DS Max’s transformation Gizmo, it’s amazing.
Been using Blender to model Character and Spaceships, good, no issue.
But 3DS max’s gizmo…once you have it, you will understand how visually intuitive it is.
You don’t have to press “G” and then Shift+Z to move along only the X and Y axist, just click on the small box between the X and Y like you see in that picture and you can move it as such.
When you are doing THOUSANDS of vertex tweakings, the whole “G” and then Shift+“Z” or “X” or “Y” is just…inefficient.
Oooo looks like 2.8 is going to be awesome !!!
Too bad I can’t use 2.8 yet because I only have one machine and it’s running 2.79 and being used for production so I cannot change it until 2.8 become stable version.
But THANK YOU, now I know blender 2.8 is REALLY GOING TO BE AWESOME for modellers !
run blender.exe from root/main folder (now this version of blender will only use local stuff locally - no change will be made to registry or other blender installment and it’s files; you can also copy/paste config files from your studio/production version to see if it fares well)
For what it’s worth, you can just G/R/S + middle mouse button drag in a direction if you dislike hitting the X/Y/Z hotkeys.
If you work with the widget visible (I have move and scale on all the time), you can Shift + click on a tool handle and drag, it is the equivalent of pressing G + Shift Z to move along the X and Y axis only.
I’m not a fan of it either, and I really hate having to turn manipulators on and off using the buttons on the bottom bar UI, but it works well enough.
You might just need to get used to it. After a long time modelling in Maya with gizmos, I now never use them. It takes a few weeks or months to get used to it. For quick editing you can also just click on a vertex and start dragging to move it and then if you middle click, it starts snapping to x, y or z depending on the direction your mouse is moving while middle mouse button is pressed. If you shift middle click you can choose which axis to exclude by moving your mouse in the direction of it.
Ediit: I did not refresh the tab to see the other comments with the same info.
That’s funny you say that because when I was using Maya, if you have to select vertices near the gizmo tool, if there’s many vertices, you have to zoom in really close to avoid pulling out the vertices. It really slows me down in Maya. I guess I’m still a noob at Maya and need to get used to it. I find blender the most efficient tool for modelling.
Hey,
I work in both 3ds max and Blender and at first I was having a hard time exactly the same way you do but as other mentioned above after some time I realized that Blender way is actually more effective and faster. Also sometimes I am having that similar problem with gizmo as mentioned above except for me it is about not being able to select close vertexes because gizmo control is “blocking” it in 3ds max so I keybind toggle off/on for gizmo to workaround that. I must admit that even thou I still love max there are times I wish that we were using Blender instead in a studio I work at :).
One of the things I love about Max gizmos is the ability to select THROUGH it. So, say you’re zoomed out and your rotation gizmo is covering up several objects. If you click and drag between the gizmo axes you’ll rotate the selected object, trackball style.
BUT! If you click between the axes and release without moving the mouse, you can still select one of the unselected objects the gizmo is blocking!
In Maya (and Blender, unfortunately) clicking on the gizmo activates it no matter what, so to select an object behind the gizmo you have to either:
Zoom in until the gizmo is no longer blocking your desired object.
Deselect the current object and then select your desired object.
Switch to the Move tool with a smaller gizmo so you can select your desired object.
I don’t know what version Max you’re using but in 2018 this feature doesn’t work as well as it used to. Autodesk has been hard at work making basic Max usability worse every year, one of the reasons I’m trying to switch over to Blender.
Ah that sucks, we got 2016 (last standalone licences) and unfortunately it has already the “new” gizmo style…:(. Nevermind toggle it off and on again kinda works for me but you are right, I don’t know what is going on but things autodesk is trying to polish (obviously) in newer versions usually end up messed pretty badly (that rant on forum afterwards thou :D).
When I tried Maya I was missing the feature to use something like G/ x,z,y… and a simple feature to rigth click cancel during action… working without gizmos is usually better, not always though. For animation i like to have it.
The white circle in the middle is also useful for quick vertex merging.
Plus one on the original post!
I do like Blender, some workflows are really quite fast. But 3DS Max’s gizmo remembers the axis constraint I was last using, which makes manipulating sub objects extremely fast. Lots of times I move a bunch of vertices on the same two axis (e.g. in screen space), so I just click and drag each one after the other.
In Blender I wouldn’t know how to do it as fast. It’s either “Click,G,Shift+Z, drag” for every single vertex or with the Tweak tool it would be “Click, drag, Shift+Z,drag”,which is still more than cumbersome.
I also find it a bit ironic that the axis gizmo in the top right corner disappears just when I need to remember which way the model is facing and which axis to select.
I think what he means is that 3ds max actually even remembers which axis you’ve constrained to during your last transform. So if you moved a vertex constrained to the vertical view axis, all further vertices you select and move are only moving in the vertical axis too. But then again, in Max you can move a sub-object by simply clicking and dragging it (without releasing the mouse button in between), which doesn’t seem to be possible in Blender (as a click-drag just draws a selection box).
EDIT: I’ll take it back, obviously when the Tweak tool is selected, click-drag works for moving. But it doesn’t remember the axis you’ve last constrained to.
Exactly. Thank you, that’s what I mean. It’s basically like the Tweak tool, but with a gizmo that sets a default constraint every time you use it.
Maybe that’s just me, but I also find it confusing having to THINK about the axis all the time. Which way is my model facing? Which way is X? Which way is Y?
I’m getting used to Blender more now, and I see that it changes the way I model. I orbit around the object more and work in screen space most of the time. This way I can just rely on the G key and disregard axis constraints. Also hitting G twice to slide vertices or edges is a nice feature.
But I still think the gizmos in Max are quite ideal. Even if the bigger planes for axis constraints may block nearby vertices sometimes… that rarely ever happens (and when it does I can just toggle the gizmo) at least they’re visible and I manage to click them. In Blender I find those small planes really hard to interact with it feels like it’s well meant but counter productive in the end.
The Tweak tool also has a tiny amount of latency compared to Max. But that’s fair. Max is just very optimized for speed in these basic functions. It’s part of what you pay for.
